In The Rain

Dean couldn't take it any more. He was sick of the whole damn mess – sick of hearing Sam's screams, sick of the furtive little glances Bobby and Cas kept shooting at him, sick of feeling helpless and scared and lost.
Finally, after Bobby asked him if he was OK for the fifth time in as many minutes, Dean snapped, slamming his beer down onto the counter.
"I'm fine, goddammit! Stop asking if I'm freaking OK, I'm OK!"
The silence that followed this outburst was somehow even worse than the unspoken tension which had filled the room before. Bobby stared back at him reproachfully, and Dean immediately regretted his words but he was damned if he was going to apologise.
Feeling the sudden need to be anywhere but here, Dean turned away and headed for the door.
"Where are you going?" Bobby asked quietly.
"Out." Replied Dean shortly. "I just…I need some air." He walked out of the room as quickly as he could, feeling Cas' gaze on the back of his neck. He grabbed the beer as he went, but left his jacket slung over the bookshelf. Both he and they knew that he wouldn't be going far. Cas started to push himself away from the wall, making as if to follow, but Bobby caught his eye and shook his head just a little. Dean needed to be alone for a while, without an angel looking over his shoulder.

That was well over an hour ago.

After walking out of the front door, closing it none-too-gently behind him, Dean had just kept on walking into the scrap yard, moving with purpose at first but slowing to an aimless ramble as his anger dissipated. It wasn't so much rage that filled him now, though he'd felt his fair share of that lately. It was more…frustration. Guilt. A sense of futility. At his inability to help, to stop this, to save his family from any of it. He couldn't save Bobby from the chair. He couldn't save Cas from falling. He couldn't save Sam from the darkness inside of him.
He just wanted it to be over.
It had started raining about half an hour ago, and slowly Dean had made his way back to the house, trudging through the deepening mud as his clothes became cold and sodden. Initially, he was grateful for the shelter Bobby's porch provided, but having reached the door he suddenly hesitated. Inside, it might be warm and dry, but then he'd have to sit in silence while his brother screamed and cried and begged for mercy, and he couldn't face it. Dean felt disgusted at himself for his own weakness. If he was honest, a tiny part of him wanted to have to be in there, hearing those terrible things, punishing himself for his inability to do anything. But the larger part of him recoiled from that room, from that house, and so Dean found himself walking away again, backing away from the door as if it were made of snakes.
He didn't go far this time, though. What was the point? So Dean sat on the old wooden steps, feeling the cold water seep through his shirts and soaking his jeans, and listened to the sounds of rain on metal that filled the yard and drowned out any of the noise behind him.

After twenty minutes, Castiel came looking for him.
Dean didn't look up from his hands, rain dripping from his hair and face and forming a shivering pool in his palms. The water was running across his cool skin in silver rivulets, cold and clear and simple. It felt good.
He slowly became aware of the angel's presence beside him, sitting a little distance away along the porch, warm and solid and radiating a kind of reassuring tranquillity that somehow smoothed the tumult of feelings raging inside Dean. He found it strange that he didn't even have to look at the angel to be calmed, to somehow feel safer…just him being there was enough.
They didn't look at each other, didn't say anything, for what seemed like a long time. They simply sat in companionable silence, surrounded by the chaos of the sodden repair yard, in their own little island of quiet with the rain falling softly down on them both.

"Why are you here, Cas?" Murmured Dean eventually, breaking the silence.
Castiel glanced at him, seeming a little wrong-footed by the question.
"I  mean, why aren't you out there, looking for…God, or whatever?"
Cas nodded slightly, and looked back out at the world, his hands clasped loosely in his lap.
"I felt I…could be of more use here." Dean snorted.
"Yeah. Right. Why? You thought of any ways to help Sammy?"
"That is not what I meant."
Dean looked over at the angel who had attached himself to them, confused by the response. Castiel sat just out of arm's reach, his head bowed and looking down at something he held in his hands. Glancing down, Dean saw black cords wound through the angel's fingers, and realised that Cas was holding his own amulet, looking it with an unreadable expression on his face.
"I only meant…I did not wish to leave." Cas continued slowly. Gradually, he closed his fist around the little gold charm, and looked back up with an air of finality, but he didn't quite meet Dean's eyes. "Leaving you alone…It felt – wrong."
Finally, he turned his head to look at Dean, his dark blue eyes soft and open, looking for confirmation, for approval. Meeting his searching gaze, Dean frowned slightly, sensing something different behind the usual calm exterior. He wasn't sure at first what it was, but it was there in Cas' eyes, his clenched fists, the way he was sitting – head slightly bowed, shoulders hunched forwards. He refocused on the eyes, and realised what it was that he was looking for.
Cas hadn't stayed just because he wanted to keep them company. It was because he simply didn't want to be alone any more.
Dean could see it more clearly, now that he knew what it was the angel was feeling; after all, he was feeling almost exactly the same way. More than anything, Castiel looked lost, like a little lost child, seeking comfort in the only way he knew how.
Dean nodded slowly, looking away. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to react to that. What could you say to reassure a lonely angel?
That he was happy Cas had stayed?
That he was grateful for the angel's presence at his side?
That he didn't want to be alone either?
All of that felt true, but somehow he couldn't say any of it. It wasn't him. It wasn't the right time.
So in the end, Dean didn't say anything. Just swallowed, and murmured quietly,
"Thanks."
He sensed Cas relaxing beside him, a slight tension in the angel's spirit fade away into the grey mist of rain that still fell all around them.
They drifted back into silence again, the wordless understanding between them bringing a kind of warmth that made Dean realise just how cold he was after sitting out in the rain for almost an hour.
He shivered, suddenly aware of the frigid water hitting his face and arms, soaking him through. Briefly, he thought of going inside.
And then, abruptly, it stopped.
Dean blinked, then glanced around. The rain was still falling everywhere else, clattering down onto the rusting metal of broken cars and drumming against the grimy window panes of Bobby's house. The deep grey clouds covered almost the whole sky, save for a tiny strip just above the horizon, which was painted deep pink and gold with the evening light, the colours dimmed by the haze of water between here and there.
Looking up, Dean couldn't quite understand what he was seeing. He could see the rain falling directly above him, great sheets of pale grey water that should be drenching him. But a few centimetres above his head, it was as if the rain hit some invisible barrier; he could actually see the water bouncing off some smooth, even surface, pooling and forming tiny rivers that trickled down behind him, before dripping down onto the dry step in front of Bobby's front door, pattering down into the cracks and knots in the wood.
The sun suddenly slipped out from behind the blanket of cloud, alighting on the distant mountains and briefly bathing the house in a deep orange glow, the last rays of light turning the relentless rain into a soft haze of gold. And for those last few seconds before the sun sank below the horizon, Dean could see their shadows cast across the whitewashed wall, his own form looking back at him from underneath the shelter of a great outstretched wing, the feathers soft and splayed out, picked out in intricate detail, tracing a smooth, perfect curve back to the man who sat beside him.
Gripped by a sudden urge, Dean slowly reached up – without looking, without breaking the illusion, using the shadows as a guide. Gently, he traced his fingers along one of the huge feathers, and just for a second he could have sworn he felt the vane bend underneath his touch, soft and smooth and so real.
The sun dipped down into the hills in the distance, the light faded, and then the rain was just rain again, but Dean's invisible shelter stayed where it was. He looked back at Castiel, undisguised wonder in his eyes, and found the angel looking back at him steadily, somehow untouched by the rain.
They looked at each other for a long time, and then, for what felt like the first time in years, Dean smiled.
"Thanks, Cas."
Cas looked back at him, and the tiniest hint of a smile graced his face, his eyes glittering with some inner light. They looked away together, and settled in to watch night fall over the world of man.